Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

23 | Blue Freckles

Their first day in the woods passes in a haze of warm greens.

Loki leads the way, and Y/N lets him, his cool confidence reassuring and convincing.

Y/N doesn't know how to get to Jöttenheim exactly, but she does know they have to go up.

She had consulted their map—to find the easiest route—but it quickly becomes apparent that her scribbled-on parchment is less detailed than Loki's cavernous, library-like memory.

As a princen of the realm, he has spent his entire lifetime gazing from The Palace's golden turrets, their dizzying spires piercing the sky. The land is rolled out below its windows like a living tapestry; the valleys heaving breaths of mist, the forest changing colour with the seasons, and the rivers gushing between rock formations like blood through veins. 

If she concentrates hard, Y/N can just about picture the gradient of the land like layers of rock in a cliff:

Grey mountains that give way to fluffy green forests.

The trees fray at the edges then pitter out completely as they reach the jigsaw of brown and red roofs.

If she brings the memory into focus she can point to the white marble homes of the king's dukes, advisors, earls, counts and barons and all those things Loki has explained but Y/N doesn't understand. There's the pointy gables of the hospital, the sooty forecourt of the blacksmith's, and the market's rainbow city of awnings.

The houses turn to squat little cottages, then lonely smallholdings stitched over the patchwork blanket of farmland like buttons.

She can identify which mountains make up The Three Sisters—because, with their sloping curves—they do indeed look like three little old ladies huddled shoulder to shoulder.

She can pick out the estuary where the river Sygg meets the ocean, and trace the source of it up to where it spills down off the hills.

It seems, however, that Loki can remember every boulder and every individual tree.

He will warn her they are approaching a hill and, sure enough, the ground will begin tilting slowly upwards.

He'll change their course to veer slightly to the left, or a fraction to the right and, when Y/N asks why, he'll say "The forest in that direction is practically impossible" or "There's a gully blocking our path, we'll have to go around".

Y/N teases him each time, making jokes that mainly involve insinuating he isn't a Jöttuun after all but rather some kind of forest sprite—

—but sure enough, when she turns to admire their progress, she'll find that knot of woodland, or that deep scar in the land he'd somehow known to avoid.

Holding the straps of his pack like an excited child on his way to his first day of school, Loki steps out in cheerful strides, evidently relishing the exercise and the fresh air. 

Every now and again, the canopy opens out to reveal a fantastically large sky, the vivid blue interrupted only occasionally by the rise and fall of the land. In the far distance, like the needle of a natural compass, the The North mountains loom menacingly, their jagged peaks embedded in the belly of a soupy, cement-coloured cloud.

It dilutes with the warm afternoon until—if she squints—Y/N can just about spy their clean white summits drenched a lemony yellow in the setting sun. 

Y/N and Loki walk until the night has swallowed them whole, their boots tripping over tree routes, clutching each other's hands and giggling in the darkness. 

Something rustles up ahead and suddenly Y/N doesn't find it so funny anymore.

Blindly, she bumps against Loki's side, seeking his hand, and he chuckles, the sound rumbling into her ear.